The Enemy Hypothesis: A Brazos High Novella

part of my day. I can only spare about an hour of friend time before I need to get back to help my sisters with their homework, so I need to make it count.
As soon as I get home, homework is the last thing on everyone’s mind. Word got around our town quickly, and my sisters and Abuela already know about the app and the chance to win a new car. We all sit around the dinner table and they grill me for details.
“That’s all there is to know,” I say, spooning more salsa on my plate. “We just have to be really nice all month and then see who wins.”
“You better win!” Maria says. “I’m so sick of riding the school bus.”
I roll my eyes. “There’s no way I’ll win,” I say, because I don’t want them to get their hopes up. It’s bad enough that I’m secretly desperately hoping I’ll win. “Too many people want this and everyone is trying really hard.”
“I would vote for you if I could,” Abuela says. She reaches across the table and pats my arm.
“Thank you,” I say, smiling at her. I kept my phone in my room so I wouldn’t be tempted to check it during dinner. But as of an hour ago, I had slipped down to number 53. This sucks. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to come up with a plan to do a lot of nice things for a lot of people. It’s only day one, after all. I’m not giving up that easily.

Six
MARK
The volunteer manager at the Brazos Animal Shelter is old enough to be my grandma, yet she looks like she could kick my butt if she wanted to. Her name is Nora. She’s muscular, about five feet tall, and she smells like coffee.
“What made you want to volunteer?” she asks as she glances over the volunteer form I just filled out. “I see you’re not a member of the animal club like most teenagers who come around here.”
I can’t tell her the truth—that I’m trying to win a free car by sucking up to the Animal Club which is our largest school club and they all volunteer here after school—so I just give her a smile. “I love dogs and my parents won’t let me get one,” I say. “I thought it would be nice to play with some shelter dogs.”
“Wonderful,” she says, seeming to believe my answer. I mean, I do like dogs. And my parents also hate dogs, so it’s not a total lie. “Let me show you around.”
I spent all of last night thinking of ways to get more kudos this month and volunteering sounds like a great idea. The Animal Club is always posting flyers around campus, asking people to volunteer to help the shelter dogs. I like dogs, so I plan to come here every chance I can so people can see me helping out and then give me kudos. Volunteer kudos have to count more for the algorithms than the kudos you get for giving pretty girls compliments, right?
Nora shows me around the facility and then tells me I can play with any dog that doesn’t have a red sticker on their chart. The red sticker dogs are aggressive and can only be handled by more experienced volunteers. I try not to make it obvious that I’m looking around the kennels, trying to see if anyone I know from school is here to see me doing this good deed. In fact, it’s probably best if I don’t make eye contact or small talk with anyone. That way people will see me minding my own business while volunteering. That’s bound to get me a ton of kudos.
It’s hard to choose a dog because I want all of them to have fun, so I just pick randomly and promise myself I’ll come back here as often as it takes to have time to play with all of them. I open the metal kennel door and kneel down to the small brown and white mutt in front of me. He’s wagging his tail excitedly. “You ready to play?” I say, reaching over and letting him smell my hand the way Nora had told me to do. He’s friendly and seems to be trusting of me, which is a good sign.
I take him outside to the large fenced in backyard. Nora said I’m allowed to run and play with him out here, using whatever toys they have available. Visiting hours end at seven when the dogs have to come inside to eat dinner, so I have three hours to earn some mega-kudos and climb up the scoreboard. I grab a tennis ball, but this little guy seems happier to lick my hands than to play.
One of the employees has several large dogs playing in one area of the yard, so I walk my little dog around the corner of the building. Right as I turn the corner, I see the last person I expect.
Abby Pena.
Her nostrils flare when she recognizes me. “What are you doing here?”
“Same thing you are,” I say, tossing the ball toward my borrowed dog. He chases after it, his tail wagging the whole time.
“But you’ve never been here before,” she says, putting her hands on her hip. Two scruffy dogs play tug-of-war with a toy, but when she talks, they stop and look up at her. “I don’t know what you think you’re trying to do, but I’m not giving you any kudos.”
I snort. “I’m not giving you any, either.”
She quickly ignores me, walking away and calling the two dogs to follow her. I watch her leave, taking a deep breath to settle my nerves. What are the odds that Miss Perfect also volunteers here? Pretty good odds, I guess. She is in the top ten of our scoreboard, after all. And it’s only day two, so clearly she frequently does good things to have gotten so much early kudos from